“Today’s press conference for the Songkran event in Bangkok is a demonstration of cooperation between various sectors. Bangkok emphasizes safety because we have to create safety and build trust for both Thai and foreign tourists as best we can. Songkran Festival is a tradition that everyone enjoys. The key is to respect other people’s rights. Have fun by being polite to one another and keeping safety in mind as much as possible. Please do not play with clay dough and high-pressure water guns and do not drink alcohol in public,” Mr. Chadchart Sittipunt, Governor of Bangkok, said after the press conference for the 2024 Maha Songkran Festival in Bangkok.
Currently, Songkran is an important festival in Thailand and has been registered by UNESCO as “Songkran in Thailand” as an item in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This year, the Bangkok area has government and private sector agencies organizing full-scale events at 118 points. There are various formats of organizing activities, divided into “Cultural Songkran” (Piat Noi), which will be a traditional Songkran event that focuses on auspiciousness, and “Fun Songkran” (very wet), which emphasizes fun and various entertainment activities.
“Please keep an eye on the news as there will be closures on different roads at different times. Please plan carefully where you will go swimming to reduce the use of personal cars or motorcycles and use public transportation more because parking is difficult to find and may not be enough to accommodate many people and tourists. As for the event area, we will not allow hawkers to have stalls because it causes stiffness in walking and creates disorder. We will have a checkpoint before entering the area, especially in the Khao San Road area. Security posts, CCTV cameras, and emergency loudspeakers have been installed and a command center has been established to monitor the situation at the Chao Phraya Room. The sub-center in the area is Chana Songkhram Police Station. There will also be an understanding with the community near the event area and officials from the whole municipality working together with the police to provide strict security supervision. I believe that this year there will be more tourists because there is more tourism promotion and there is also the issue of Free Thai-Chinese Visa,” the Bangkok Governor emphasized.
● All event locations are at your fingertips via the happy. city web application.
For this year’s Songkran event, Bangkok acts as an intermediary connecting with various sectors by working with network partners to create a web application https://happining.city/songkran2024 It brings together all 118 Songkran festival locations across Bangkok in one click, showing the format of events at each location. You can pin or check information using filters, and choose the type of event (city festival/community festival/concert festival), preference, or level of wetness in the event area. There is also notification of events in the area and the ability to share traffic situations so that tourists and citizens can enjoy Songkran according to their own needs and spread out swimming without being crowded in just one area. It can increase convenience, safety, and ease of traveling during the festival.
